


a house from a broken home

by sapphire_blue



Series: even children get older [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, also this is set in the post winter soldier but pre age of ultra era, canon what canon I give you crack because it's more fun, crossover soup that probably won’t make sense if looked at too closely, in my head the avengers are a big frat house of dumdums and nothing bad ever happened to them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:27:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24674593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphire_blue/pseuds/sapphire_blue
Summary: In the aftermath of the war for the dawn, a girl is transported across time and space to a strange new reality.In a different world, a team of heroes get the surprise of their lives.
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Tony Stark, Jon Snow/Arya Stark, Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov
Series: even children get older [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1785226
Comments: 13
Kudos: 79
Collections: Jonrya Week: A Dream of Spring





	a house from a broken home

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from “where do broken hearts go” by one direction. this story can be read as a stand-alone or a sort of "crack-y" sequel to my previous fic "if the morning light don't steal our soul." also shout to my girl stef for hearing me ramble about this and reading this "just one more time" for multiple times to calm me down.

There is something to be said about a quiet lab. The feeling of solitude that encompasses one when there is no one around to poke and prod at him.

“So, I had this dream last night - ”

Well, so much for solitude.

Bruce Banner smiles fondly. Tony has a prickly exterior and trades in barbs and is well-versed in sarcasm, but underneath all that he is a good man. He had given Bruce a place to call home without hesitation, and for that Bruce loves him.

“Tony, was this another dream about creating a superbot? Because I am going to just tell you again how spectacularly bad an idea that is.”

Tony pauses in his tracks, squinting at him in a way that suggests that the dream was more of a waking hallucination than a product of an asleep mind, and tilts his head to the side. “Maybe?”

Bruce shakes his head in exasperation. Tony is a genius, but he is a bit of an idiot when it comes to himself and he has the self-preservation of a mad scientist in pursuit of the holy grail.

“I don’t think the world needs another superbot,” he tells Tony. “But you can make something a little smaller perhaps?”

Tony’s eyes glint with ideas, and Bruce knows that if he doesn’t distract the man now, he will start spouting off his ideas at a breakneck speed.

“Are the others up yet?”

Tony snorts. “The murder twins got back from wherever the fuck they were this morning and decided that sleep was for the week,” Tony rolls his eyes as if he hasn’t done the exact same thing twice this week. “Red is flirting with Capsicle and Birdbrain is up in the vents, probably.”

Bruce purses his lips. It is not any of his business what his teammates get up to. Steve and Natasha have been on the edge of something for quite a while now. It does not interfere with their team dynamics and that is all that matters, really. Tony just likes to poke fun because, as mentioned before, he lacks self-preservation and actively courts death. Natasha has threatened to snap his neck quite frequently over the last few weeks. 

He is about to warn Tony to not say anything _Tony-like_ where Natasha can hear when there’s a bright light illuminating the lab. He is almost blinded, and when he blinks out of the disoriented state, there is a girl on the floor in front of him.

He looks up at Tony and Tony looks at him. They both look back down at the girl on the floor.

It is a little girl. It is a little girl in heavy furs and clutching a thin sword in her hands. It is a little girl with a big red spot in the middle of her chest. A spot that is growing larger and larger by the second.

“Medbay!” He finally manages to croak and Tony snaps out of his stupor. 

“JARVIS,” Tony orders, his voice shaking slightly. “Call Dr. Cho.”

* * *

Dr. Cho tells them the girl was stabbed in the heart. It’s a miracle she’s still alive, she says.

Miracle, Tony thinks bitterly. The girl can’t be older than 15 and she is at death’s door because someone stabbed her in the heart. _A kid, God_ , he rubs a palm over his face tiredly. They don’t know who the girl is. They can’t find her on any database. Facial recognition turns up nothing. They don’t know how she appeared at the tower. There hasn’t been any alert to a breach of security and all his systems are still perfectly in place. The girl was not even awake when she appeared for god’s sake. Which begs the question: Who sent her? And why did they send her here? Did they think the Avengers could help the girl?

Questions, questions, and questions. And no one to offer any answer.

The girl is unconscious and Dr. Cho doesn’t even know if she will wake up.

 _A girl. A kid, God_.

The Avengers take turns sitting with the girl. It’s probably creepy how they build a rapport with a comatose teenager they have never met before. Nothing about their life is normal, anyway. 

He wonders what SHIELD would have done. For all their faults, they weren’t evil. Would they have helped the child or would they have locked her up until they could get answers? Even Nat and Clint, who had worked for SHIELD for over a decade, had been uncertain about their morality. No matter. SHIELD is in the wind now. 

They check in the girl in the medbay when they can, and Tony keeps looking for her on every database he can find.

It isn’t until she awakens that they get an answer.

* * *

Two weeks after the strange girl falls out of nowhere, Tony is awakened by JARVIS in the middle of the night. “Sir,” JARVIS says politely. “Your guest is awake in the med bay and she seems to be in distress.”

Tony squints at the clock he keeps on his bedside table and reads 3:07 am. _Fuck_ , Tony thinks and rubs at his eyes. Beside him, Pepper sleeps on peacefully. Tony carefully gets out of bed, making sure to not wake her up, and slips on his shoes. He is in his boxers and a ratty t-shirt, he realizes with a groan, so he is also forced to tie a robe around him. As he is making his way to the medbay, something occurs to him. “JARVIS, is anyone else up?”

“Miss Romanoff is,” JARVIS tells him. “She’s in the kitchen eating ice-cream.”

Why a superspy would be up in the middle of the night eating ice cream is beyond Tony, and he doesn’t even try to make a guess. “Tell her to meet me there.”

When he gets there, Nat is already standing at the door looking in, arms crossed over her chest and a frown on her face. “She’s a kid,” she tells him quietly.

Tony grimaces. “I know,” he says just as quietly. “Let’s go.”

Inside, the girl is sitting up on her bed. Her eyes are bouncing from one corner of the room to another, and there are tear streaks down her cheeks. Her hand is pressed to her heart, where her wound had been, but she is not screaming, which is what he would have done had he been the one waking up at a strange place with tubes and wires attached to him.

 _This one is brave_ , he thinks to himself.

He lets Nat walk into the room first. She is a master at disguise and she can appear more approachable and trustworthy. He follows her at a steady pace, and when they stop at her bedside, the girl finally looks up at them.

“I must say,” she rasps, and she sounds so, _so_ young. “I had hoped to see my family in the afterlife, not strangers.”

It takes a moment for her meaning to sink in. Tony blanches. “No, no, kid,” he hurries to reassure her. “You’re not dead.”

The kid takes a deep breath and says, “I felt Longclaw plunge into my heart. I felt it catch aflame, and I felt it as I lay dying in the snow.”

“You’re definitely not dead,” Nat tells her. “Who did that to you?”

At the same time, Tony says, “It’s summer. There’s no snow outside.”

“I don’t” - The kid looks around the room again. “Where am I? What is this place?”

“You’re at Stark Tower.”

The kid - ugh, Tony has to ask the girl her name. It’s exhausting referring to her as ‘the kid’ - glares at them, her grey eyes so intense it makes him squirm a little, and grits out, “You’re lying. There is only the broken tower at Winterfell and this is not that.”

Tony opens his mouth to speak, but Natasha’s elbow jabs into his side and he shuts up. Natasha asks the kid softly, “We won’t hurt you.” The girl scoffs at them, and Natasha repeats it again, “We won’t hurt you. What’s your name?”

The girl goes quiet, looking back and forth between Natasha and him, and finally seems to come to a decision.

“I am Arya Stark of Winterfell. Tell me where I am.”

* * *

They end up calling in a team meeting at 4 in the morning. It is a rare thing but even Thor is in attendance; he has been taking a break from his princely duties to stay on Midgard, as he calls it. They all shuffle into the medbay slowly, steps heavy with sleep, but they come.

“What’s this about?” Clint asks him, although from the way he’s been staring at the girl, Arya, suggests that he’s already made a guess.

Tony still can’t believe it. Arya has not said much, a tiny suspicious thing as she is, but what little she did disclose is troubling. She spoke of a place called Westeros, of creatures called the Others, and a battle between the living and the dead. She hasn’t said who had stabbed her in the heart, but if she had been in battle, it is not hard to gather it had been one of those creatures. Tony is still struggling to believe. It’s just - the girl is fifteen if she’s a day and a tiny little thing, and she is a Stark. Tony had not known there were any other living Starks. He had always thought he was the last. 

_Are we related?_ He wonders. _Are you a half-sister that I never knew? Or a long lost cousin?_

Tony had called for JARVIS before the rest of the team had arrived and asked the AI to set a search for Westeros. When JARVIS had spoken, Arya had almost jumped out her skin. “Who’s that?” She had said, glancing around wildly. “Show yourself!”

It had taken a solid five minutes to calm down the girl, and that had been Natasha’s doing, mostly. He had seen the way Arya had watched the red of Nat’s hair, and there was a longing on her face that had seemed so out of place on such a young girl. But Nat had known her fair share of tragedy at a young age too. She had been able to soothe the girl with a few calming words since the explanations about JARVIS had seemed to go right over her head.

Even now, Natasha has the palm of her right hand splayed beside Arya’s on the bed. They’re not touching, but the proximity itself seems to be enough. Tony listens absentmindedly as Nat recites what Arya had said, Arya silent beside her, and his mind is already whirring with ideas. He only shakes himself out of his musings when he realizes that Thor is speaking. The god is solemn, his face pinched in sympathy as he says, “It is possible that she is of a different world tree.”

 _That_ , now _that_ is something.

“Are you talking about an alternate dimension?” Bruce asks the question before he can. “Or just a different realm like Asgard?”

“I am not certain, son of Banner, I would have to consult with Heimdall,” Thor replies in that gravelly voice of his that people has dubbed as his ‘godly voice,’ but is really just him speaking like a man straight out of Shakespearean plays. “But what she speaks of reminds me of Niflheim. Little is known about it, as it is a world of ice and shrouded in mist.”

“The world is not entirely ice,” Arya speaks up finally, the first words she had said in the presence of the other Avengers. “That’s just the North. The South and the Free Cities do not even see snow in some winters.”

More data to consider in figuring out where she is from. 

Thor frowns and says, “Perhaps. I need to consult with Heimdall.” Suddenly, his face softens and he walks forward so he is by Arya’s bed right beside Natasha. He crouches in front of her and speaks in a gentle tone that they had only seen come out in rare instances. “Do not worry, my lady, we will find a way to bring you home.”

Arya grimaces when Thor says “my lady,” but at the word “home,” she looks away. “Home,” she says bitterly. “I spent all my life trying to get back home, and every step I took only seemed to take me further away. Now even death will not grant me that.”

The Avengers have nothing to say to that.

**Author's Note:**

> i started this for day 2 of the jonryaweek but y’all know me. late to the party as usual. Contemplated writing the whole thing and then posting it, but honestly, that would probably take me a _long_ time, so here we are. 
> 
> As always, every kudos, bookmark, and comment is appreciated. Share your opinion in a comment, even if it's just a few words. Constructive criticism is welcome, of course, and if I have made a mistake anywhere, please tell me so I can fix it. I don't always proof-read my work.
> 
> \- Sapphire xx


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